I am the Chief Strategy Officer at The Soufan Group, an international security consultancy and co-author of the New York Times top 10 bestseller, "The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al Qaeda," (WW Norton / Penguin, 2011). More info: http://www.dfreedman.org Follow: http://twitter.com/dfreed1

9/12/2011 @ 6:19AM15,955 views

45 Minutes to Interrogate the 9/11 Plotter

If interviewers want to stump former Vice President Dick Cheney on his book tour, they should ask him about the Oct. 6, 2002, attack on the French oil tanker the Limburg, and what happened in the 45 minutes FBI interrogators had with Ramzi Binalshibh and another high-level al Qaeda terrorist a few weeks before that.

On Sept. 11, 2002, Binalshibh – who served as the liaison between the 9/11 hijackers and the plot’s mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – was captured in Pakistan along with another senior operative and several lower-level terrorists. The story of what happened next is detailed for the first time today in a book I’ve co-authored with former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan, entitled “The Black Banners.” He wrote the chapter about this episode, and it’s been subject to CIA redactions, but the below story still comes through in the book.

After their arrest in Pakistan the group was handed to local CIA officials. Those officials were instructed by CIA headquarters not to give FBI interrogators access to Binalshibh or the second senior operative. This is because authorities in Washington had already decided to render them to foreign countries, to be interrogated by foreign officials using coercive interrogation methods. The FBI agents were instead only given access to the lower-level terrorists.

Using classic rapport-building techniques, the agents quickly gained actionable intelligence from them, including details of safe houses al Qaeda was using and of specific plots in the works. Impressed with these successes – and believing that terrorists with American blood on their hands should be questioned by U.S. interrogators – a senior CIA official on the ground decided to ignore her orders from Washington and instead give the FBI interrogators 45 minutes with Binalshibh and the other top terrorist.

“If they cooperate, then maybe the whole idea of rendition will be scrapped and we can continue interrogating them here,” she told them.

Her trust was validated as the FBI team gained cooperation and actionable intelligence in the 45 minutes sessions. FBI headquarters celebrated the breakthrough and disseminated the intelligence gained – and were confident that the planned rendition would now be halted.

That didn’t happen. Instead the CIA deputy chief of station chastised the FBI agents for reporting their successes, yelling at them: “Don’t you understand that nobody can stop these guys from being sent to … This is bigger than you. This is an order coming from the White House. There is nothing you or the FBI can do. You can’t stop this rendition.”

FBI headquarters tried negotiating with the White House and the CIA to at least give the agents more time with Binalshibh and the other operative. The request was refused, with the official line being that neither Binalshibh nor the other terrorist had cooperated, and that any information given was false. The two were then rendered to the foreign countries.

The next chapter of the book details how FBI agents – working with a military fusion cell in Yemen led by Col. Scott Duke – investigated a lead gained about a planned attack on an oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, and found it to be credible.

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The point here is clear, rendition and torture were continued not because they were effective, because they were not, but because the White House had justify past episodes of rendition and torture. If rendition and torture had been stopped, it would have been a tacit admission of that the earlier efforts were ineffective. In the US Army there is a saying “F*ck up, get up”. If there is a sufficiently large sized mistake made, the officer in charge will almost certainly get a promotion. To punish the officer would mean that a blunder had been made so to assure everyone that there are no blunders, that what had happened was meant to happen, so the officer gets a commendation and a promotion.

This principle was amusingly shown in the book and movie “Catch-22″ which is set in WWII. There is a bombing mission out of North Africa to destroy a small Italian village of no military significance. The mission goes awry and the bombs are dropped in the sea. Rather than admit that a squadron had been sent to destroy the wrong village and that the crew of the squadron had bombed a completely different target (of equal insignificance), the crews of the bombers are given medals. The leader of this mission shows up to the ceremony completely naked in hopes of getting a Section 8 discharge. He fails at this as well as the commanding officer will not be thrown off his game and pins the medal on the naked officer.

After, if “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” (kidnapping and torture) were not effective, why are not the perpetrators in jail in The Hague, or Ft. Leavenworth, or even Guantanamo Bay?

Thank you, Mr Freedman, for not only writing this piece, but for doing so at Forbes.

The more people who take the time to actually read the facts(as opposed to spin by speechwriters and politicians who have used the entire issue to show how ‘tough’ they are) on this issue, the more, I hope, that they will see that despite the rather pretentious(‘we’re patriotic Americans: our violence toward people whose culture, religion and language we don’t understand shows we mean business – and we love our country!’) and long disproved argument that mistreating suspects achieves actionable intelligence reality shows, and has always shown, that such policy achieves only bad leads and misinformation, it also gives our enemies untold PR ammunition(‘these are America’s REAL values’), creates hatred by families and communities of the majority innocent who were systematically tortured over long periods of time, and allows real, life-saving intelligence to be set aside, simply because it was achieved by proven but un-PC(right wing-style) means.

The above story i but one of many, and all of them show that Cheney and co were and are wrong – factually and morally. And their clear dishonesty when they make their arguments shows they know it – I guess they’re fighting or their legacy – as usual, America does not come first.

The results achieved by focusing on the right way to achieve intelligence has paid off massively over the last 2 and a half years – but of course, the right wing media machine will never honestly report this issue(preferring instead to be the stenographers of Cheney’s club for authoritarianism), therefore a large proportion of Americans will never get the chance to decide for themselves which methods really work(outside of the moral question of once someone is off the battlefield, and no longer a danger, nobody should be treated as less than human – and they certainly ought to be judges as to whether they were ever a danger in the first place: something that never happened to most of those who were handed over in Afghanistan by Northern Alliance soldiers who were paid good money to hand people over, & hardly any proof was ever offered as to guilt) – unless they manage to escape the paranoia, disinformation and class warfare- heavy echo chamber that is right wig, and even mainstream media. This same issue is what has caused such skepticism in some quarters over climate change – not a discussion of the facts, but misinformation about science- in fact outright denial of the Scientific Method. Which is bizarre beyond belief, but has been bought into by many, many people. Who have little access to information not shaped by those interested in squashing the issue for profit. Anyway with all that in mind(and more, obviously!), thank you Forbes for at least offering up this morsel. I hope you will allow more honest articles about this issue, and others which have been used by politicians to divide Americans for their political gain.